Wheelchair basketball: Terry's troops need a change - Ade

00:01, 4 December 2012

ByEvening Gazette

ADE Adepitan insists Britain’s wheelchair basketball team need to make wholesale changes and fast, warning Teessider Terry Bywater’s team that they will need to prove their worth or risk getting left behind.

ADE Adepitan insists Britain’s wheelchair basketball team need to make wholesale changes and fast, warning Teessider Terry Bywater’s team that they will need to prove their worth or risk getting left behind.

Bywater’s points scoring form was a rare highlight in an otherwise disappointing Paralympics display from the men’s GB team who went into the Games on a surge of optimism after being crowned European champions in 2011.

But they failed to produce their best when it mattered most in the capital, eventually seeing their medal hopes dashed when they lost 61-46 to six-time world champions USA in the match for bronze.

What the future holds for 29-year-old Redcar-based Bywater, who won bronze at the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Paralympics, is now unclear with head coach Murray Treseder leaving his post last month.

Adepitan was part of the squad that won bronze at Athens 2004 and insists the time has come to ring in more changes and give youth a chance in the new Paralympic cycle ahead Rio 2016.

“Wheelchair basketball was one of the few disappointments for Britain at the Games - the men’s was a real shame,” said Adepitan, who was speaking at the Aviva School Sport Matters Awards at Lord’s.

“They are the first team not to have won a medal since the Sydney Paralympics and to be quite honest we were not even close.

“I was very frustrated because on paper we have a talented team that have had great facilities and funding.

“The resignation of the coach Murray Treseder is no loss in my opinion. Good riddance quite frankly.

“He was not the right guy for the job in the first place and we were wrong to persist with him.

“What we really need now is to freshen things up, not necessarily wholesale changes but at the very least 70% of the squad needs to change.

“Some of the older guys in the team have to make a serious commitment for four more years until Rio.

“I think we need to bring in a lot of fresh blood, mixed in with the odd experienced guy, rather than persist with the same thing that clearly is not working.”

And Adepitan insists that in order to right the wrongs of this summer the sport needs a top-to-bottom re-think.

“The real problem is that we don’t have a strong domestic league, 90% of our best players play abroad and that can’t be the right way to do it,” he added.

“If we can build a strong league with new sponsors and the like then hopefully we can get some of the best players to come over here rather than the other way around.”

THE Aviva and Daily Telegraph School Sport Matters Awards recognise outstanding achievements in school sport across the country, and are part of Aviva’s wider commitment to support the next generation of British sporting talent.

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